Baroness Susan Greenfield on IT’s impacts on children
Although I had mentioned this in a blog last year, considering my recent blogs on Wi-Fi technology in schools, it is worthwhile to revisit Professor Susan Greenfield’s 2012 Youtube talk on how new digital technologies are rewiring the brain’s frontal cortex – the area of the brain responsible for cognitive analysis and abstract thought.
Greenfield suggests that ‘mind change’, brought on by increasing internet use and the popularity of social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, will be the new climate change.
The first part of her presentation deals with how the brain develops and the second part about children and overuse of IT and its impact of their ability to learn and also diminishing interpersonal skills. Points in the presentation include:
– Proper epidemiology is required to understand the changes in the brain
– Overuse of screens/IT world is damaging children’s ability to learn
– Autism spectrum is well suited to the IT world of isolation
– Reduced social interaction is the result
– Excessive twittering “” leads to compulsive, antisocial behavior
– IT overuses is fostering reduced empathy, social isolation, disconnect from ethics, principles
– IT “” develops knowledge “” this is not the same as integrated learning and understanding
– Books unfold sequentially “” this is the natural way of learning
– Googling accesses random knowledge in a random order
– Results in fragmented attention
– Reward seeking, addictive behaviour
– Pre frontal cortex damaged by heavy IT use
– Screens reward and excite
– Sensation trumps cognition
– Challenge is larger than climate change
– Mind change is exploiting our potential
Also see: Susan Greenfield: Mind Change – New Technologies & The Future of the Brain
Published on Mar 19, 2013
A vast range of new technologies are transforming our lives. Could it be that the human mind is also undergoing unprecedented changes? Susan Greenfield presents her provocative work on what she considers to be the crisis of our changing world.
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